Marc Jacobs / Spring 2011 RTW

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In Cuban heels, a black crepe de chine shirt, and black pants admirably contoured to his admirably contoured derriere, Marc Jacobsgreeted Diane von Furstenberg backstage at his show, a delirious ode to seventies glamour. “Why don’t they look like that anymore?” he asked her of the girls done up like Grace Coddington (shot by David Baileyin St.-Tropez) and Jerry Hall (captured by Norman Parkinson on Mustique). “Remember, you used to dress like that!”

Well, maybe now they will look like that again, as Marc made a persuasive case for the lacquered glamour of Marisa Berenson, Loulou de la Falaise, and DVF (circa 1975).

WithTom Fordchanneling the kind of presentations favored by Jimmy Galanos at the Plaza and H (for Halston, darling) at his Olympic Tower aerie with his own bewitching show, there is definitely more than a whiff of the giddy, hedonistic era so vividly evoked in Alicia Drake’s The Beautiful Fall in the air. Make that heady clouds of Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium chez Marc, who placed his audience in the round and sent his cabine of girls out double-quick-time (from the slices in a circular, sculptured wall of tawny gold leaf) to the frenzied strains of Vivaldi strings.

The glossy seventies have proved a rich mine for Marc through the years, providing him with inspiration for some of his strongest collections. And although this wasn’t as provocative or thoughtful as his work can sometimes be, the feel-good feeling of a rose satin pantsuit that evokes Biba in its shapely jacket and wide-leg pants, a stiff cotton gypsy blouse with billowing sleeves and a midi-length dirndl that recalls the glory years of Rive Gauche and Jungle Jap, skinny ziggurat-pattern knits with more than a soupçon of Missoni to them, and pretty, geometric-thirties-as-seen-through-seventies-eyes prints that bring to mind Walter Albini (celebrated in a new book co-written by W’s Stefano Tonchi) all look exuberant for our delirious and celebratory post-recession moment.

Marc’s clothes were uncomplicated, his palette delicious—combinations of tan, purple, and terra-cotta, say, or hibiscus pink, tangerine, and mauve. Frivolity was in the details: the giant orchids sprouting in elaborately crimped and waved hair, the fireworks of colored feathers on a velvet ribbon choker, and the golden glitter on a Japanese sandal or thick-heeled pump. They made you long for a balmy night at Le Club Sept.